Fundamental Physics

Feynman Lecture 2 - Basic Physics - my copy 2-1 IntroductionLook at a beach, the waves, foam, sand, animals, thought, happiness… how do we understand all these seemingly different physical phenomena? We term the answers found to this question, by application of the scientific method, fundamental physics. Fundamental physics is likened to a game of chess, where we understand some of the rules, if not the strategy. Centuries of observation, reason and experiment give us a number of different classes of rules “...however, the aim is to see complete nature as different aspects of one set of phenomena” and so we attempt to find more general, more encompassing rules, almagamating classes, e.g. heat and mechanics, the electromagnetic field, quantum mechanics of chemistry. The goal is, essentially, to understand "basic phenomena in terms of the smallest set of principles."2-2 Physics Before 1920